Bethesda has detailed what’s new in its first seasonal event with a Patch 7 preview.

“Each year, since the founding of Helvetia in 1869, the townsfolk celebrated Fasnacht by donning fantastic masks and parading through the decorated town,” Bethesda explained. “The festivities culminated by burning an effigy of Old Man Winter on the bonfire to signal the end of winter. The townsfolk may be long gone, but dutiful bots have kept the party rolling every year-and they welcome your participation!”

Fasnacht Parade is a “repeatable, limited-time event quest” that will be available for just one week from 19th March. To participate, you must speak with the Master of Ceremonies in Helvetia and then “divide and conquer to find and aid the town’s robotic shopkeepers in setting up for the annual parade”. Along the way you’ll be asked to join in with a “variety of party prep duties that may have you stepping on stage to play a cheery tune, choosing the perfect decorations, or exterminating some buzzing pests”. Find and aid the Protectrons quickly enough, and they’ll get to march in the parade… during which you’ll have to defend them, of course.

Hold me.

There’s no limit on the number of times you can get involved, nor how much “sweet loot” or Fasnacht masks you can collect before the event closes on 26th March.

As for tweaks and updates? Bethesda has “greatly reduced” the amount of condition damage both energy and heavy weapons can stand, and semi-auto energy weapons have had an additional damage boost of +10 per cent so “they have a little more bite”. There’ll also be adjustments to the C.A.M.P. and Workshop budget system “that should allow you to build even bigger and fancier Wasteland abodes”, and the dev team has tweaked challenge tracking “to make challenges easier to keep an eye on as you make progress toward completing them”.